AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 14, 2005 — Today I realized I lost a day. No, not today. I lost January 12. I posted it but then I inadvertently overlaid it on both my computer and my WEB space. Oddly, I didn't feel much loss in this regard. However, if you read it and I later need to remember what I did that day...let me know OK?

We had to get up early. It wasn't so bad although I love sleeping when it is cool. We keep the house cool and sleep next to a window that radiates a little cool. I love the cool sheets and pillows.

We were up early to deliver my car to the dealer for six months maintenance and inspection.

It was just sevenish and dawn was breaking when I drove the couple of miles to the Honda dealership. They just opened the service line and I quickly got checked in and FFP picked me up. So we were early to the club. For me anyway. FFP often goes early. He still officially works. I do thirty minutes on the new recumbent bike and do a few upper body exercises and FFP is ready to go. It's nice getting home so early with some kind of workout under your belt. Of course, I may waste the day. I finish up yesterday's journal entry, realize that I've lost the day before. But I don't worry about it more than two seconds. I didn't say or do anything interesting on Wednesday. Did water aerobics, had lunch with my friend the (unproduced) playwright, went to Central Market and spent overy thirty dollars in the express line. The usual stuff. And I have decided, in any case that I won't necessarily write daily.

After my journal is put to bed I decide to read the newspapers and have some more coffee and some breakfast before sticking in to my duties. (I'm planning to work on the finances by looking at some of our holdings and getting the basis for certain stocks and working on the tax organizer and the net worth spreadsheet. And I'm planning on spending a little time with the short stories and then something else from the extensive 'to do' list.)

I make a cup of coffee and decide I should broil some chicken thighs we have thawed. I should have used the broiler pan but I cover a cookie sheet in foil and rub spices and olive oil on the chicken. While they are cooking, I fiddle around in one of the drawers that is crammed with cookbooks and recipes. We don't cook much but we have a lot of books and recipes. I dig out the looseleaf recipe saver my Aunt Mary gave me around the time I graduated from college. I find a piece of yellow legal pad with a recipe copied from someone else's cookbook. I think I made this sweetbreads recipe in 1988. I'm thinking about trying it again. I eat a banana and cereal with nonfat yogurt. Meanwhile, olive oil has spilled on the bottom of the oven and is smoking a little. I take the chicken out and clean up the pan and put it away in a refrigerator container.

I put in the time on the finances. I don't get everything I intend to done. But I do get some cost basis stuff straightened out. The tax worksheet is depressing. Not just because taxes are depressing but because of all the gobbledygook. Why's it all so hard? But then none of it really matters much, does it? I do my work up in FFP's office because some records are up there. I decide to upgrade the bookkeeper's machine's OS. (It's running ME of all things, but I'm just updating that with secuirty fixes.) I also do a scan for spam stuff. I stop a couple of times to look at something FFP is doing. I don't sit up there while he works that often.

I have some lunch about two (two chicken thighs with some mustard and green onions) just when the maid is arriving. Which reminds me, I read that the gubmint was changing its guidelines about diet and exercise. They want you to eat gazillion servings of fruit and vegie and exercise ninety minutes a day or something if you are to lose weight. I think that they must be thinking people are following their guidelines and still getting fat so...up the guidelines!

I should put some time in on the creative writing. I have thought a bit about the story that wasn't working yesterday. I decide to reread the first two stories I wrote, to get some context for the third one that doesn't seem to want to flow. It needs dialog and it needs purpose. What I end up doing is editing and adding to the first one. This one knows what it wants to be. It has some fictional elements that make it more true. It is a tale from a normal, ordinary life. It's the only kind of tale I can tell at present. There are only one or two (oh, maybe three or four) things in my life that are shocking. (Well, to me anyway.) The kind of thingst that, if they ring true, can move a story. I can't write about those even in fiction. When I'm done editing this story, though, I'm pretty happy with it. It has lots of dialog. Some flesh. By that I don't mean sex or even skin. But the stuff that makes things real and cohesive. Good exercise but I don't know if I'll ever try to publish it.

FFP enlists some help on WEB stuff. I do what he needs quickly. He calls about my car. They say thirty minutes. I hope they get done so I can get it picked up and get a shower and we can go off to the opera without too much rush. Come to think of it...maybe today was a lost day after all. Not just a day in which I lost the record of another day. FFP gets ready to take me and they call back and by 4:30 we have gotten the car and made an appointment for Monday to take FFP's car in for maintenance. Life is made of such errands, eh?

I get my shower (yeah, I haven't showered and it's four-thirty) and eat a sandwich and watch some TV and get dressed for the opera. FFP gets dressed, too. He looks better than I do. He is wearing some very nice Bally lace ups and a very interesting tie he dug out of his collection.

We go pretty early to the opera, taking some reading material. I get a vodka tonic and sit and read about the melodramatic story of Elektra and look at all the ads in the program. Then I read the intro to a short story collection I borrowed from FFP's car. Finally the performance begins. The contraband lawyer who sits next to me has brought a drink into the hall. Once he brought a radio and earphone to listen to an important (to him) sports event. He tells me he has this drink under his jacket. Later he will snooze then wake up and drink his drink. The performance is without intermission. I don't like it as well as I did Tosca but it has its moments. I think Brenda Harris who plays the sister is the best performer. But what do I know?

At home we decide to snack again. We briefly thought of going out to Jeffrey's bar or Hyde Park Bar and Grill but we thought better of it. I'm glad. We change and I have a beer and nachos and FFP has a grilled cheese sandwich and some of my nachos.

I constantly marvel at the power of the WEB, at how much information and how many services are available there. Today I had browser windows open for the following: (1) tracking my order of a new flat panel display for Forrest; (2) a control panel for the WEB server that is delivering the page you are reading; (3) a map showing the location of a dinner we have planned in New York City; (4) a Wikipedia entry for Nora Barnacle; (5) the Internet Movie database entry for Hotel Rwanda; (6) a stock price summary for Procter and Gamble; (7) a historic stock price display for Advo, Inc; (8) a map showing the location of the Tax Assessor office in Austin; (9) an article about the Bloomsday Centenary last summer; (10) an article comparing Linux and Windows written by a friend; (11) a quiz site called tickle.com; (12) my own entry for yesterday; (13) the Internet Movie database entry for Master of the Game; (14) a Wikipedia entry showing a Rousseau painting that is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; (15) the WEB page for a restaurant in New York where I may get reservations; (16) the WEB page for our hotel in New York; (17) a WEB page showing a review of the restaurant whose WEB page is in number 15; (18) another journaler's WEB page; (19) a TexasSports.com page on UT Women's basketball. Why I had these pages all open is pretty clear (except the quiz site...I'm not sure how I got there). But the neat part is that all this info was there at my fingertips...who was responsible for movies, where things were located in New York and Austin, what amenities my hotel claimed to have, a painting, restaurant reviews, other people's lives. Using the back buttons revealed lots of other meandering and Google searches.